Author's Note: Wow, I really am surprised at the feedback I'm getting with this story. It makes me all warm and fuzzy inside ;) So here is chapter number five. I hope you all enjoy it.
Disclaimer: No, I do not own Disney's live action musical: Newsies. No, I do not own Lewis Carroll's novel, Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland, nor Disney's cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland. I own Stress, her cat Ashes and her fixation with hopping newsies.
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Curiouser and Curiouser
June 19, 2006
Stress has accidentally stumbled into the wonderful world of Newsieland.
Will she ever get back home to New Jersey? Not if the Queen of New York has her way.
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The hair on her arms began to stand on end and she nervously started to head down the street. "If I don't see them, they're not there," she muttered, trying to block out the rhythmic hippity-hop clopping of boots coming from right behind her. Just then, as she was hurrying away, she was beginning to wish that she had just stayed in that claustrophobic little room. It may have been small but it was safe. Or it was at least safer than wandering around a strange Newsieland city all by her lonesome. And there had been food inside. She smiled, remembering the tasty eat me cookies – even if those cookies had made her ginormous.
Stress continued walking and breathed a sigh of relief when the sound of the footsteps died away and just stopped. Wiping an imaginary bead of sweat off of her brow – because that's what one does, you know – she kept walking until she made it to the end of the block. She would have kept walking except, at the end of the block, there was a great white house, complete with white picket fence, which caught her attention. "Whoa, nice house. I wonder who lives here." Luckily, though, she didn't have long to wonder because as she leaned against the picket fence, careful not to touch the pointy top, the hippity-hop clopping came back followed by a startled cry of "Sarah!"
Though Sarah definitely was not her name, Stress spun around to finally face whoever it was that had followed her down the street. Surprisingly – or, rather, unsurprisingly given that she should have known that only one person in this strange Newsieland would make such a hippity-hop clopping noise – it was David.
David took one last hop forward before landing a few feet away from Stress. "Sarah, what are you doing outside of the house? You haven't been meeting with that no-good Knave again, have you? Cause I told you before, Jack is a scabber."
She perked up brightly at the mention of Jack but, despite the fact that she was in Newsieland, David referred to him as a 'Knave', whatever that was. And, unless 'Knave' is 'Cowboy' in bunny language, he wasn't the Jack she was looking for. Instead, she bristled at being mistaken for Sarah. She opened her mouth to argue that she was not Sarah when she changed her mind and shook her head instead. She was pretty sure that any argument she began would only be pointless. "Whatever you say, David."
David nodded. "Good," he said before withdrawing his pocket watch from his trouser pockets. He yelped audibly when he saw the time and looked back up at Stress. "Sarah, I'm quite late and I have seemed to misplace my button-down shirt and my brown hat," he said and Stress chose that moment to adopt an innocent expression – she had left them floating in her ocean of tears, whoops. "So, run along, and fetch me some more." He pointed to the house.
Stress looked behind her, glancing at the house, before turning back to him. Is he really expecting me to get it for him? I'm not his slave. She was going to tell him so when she realized that this was a once-in-a- lifetime experience. How often had she been invited into the house of a hopping newsie? That's right. None. So, with an exaggerated sigh and a roll of her eyes, Stress opened the gate to the white picket fence and began to head down the walkway. She dared a look behind her and saw that David was resting against the white picket fence. Lazy.
Once she was inside the house, Stress found herself gaping at all the expensive and priceless things that David had inside. "My, they really did underestimate how much money a newsie could pull in," she said and picked up a golden cigarette case from what had to be the dinner table. However, when she opened the case, there were not cigarettes inside – it was a golden carrot case. "Ha," she laughed to herself, "it's a 24 karat case." No, she really wasn't above such bad puns.
She placed the golden case back down on the table and went off in search of the bunny's clothes. There was a flight of stairs at the end of the hallway she was in so she took them. Once she had made it upstairs, Stress began to open various doors. It was the third door that she opened that led to David's bedroom; the blown up poster of Bryan Denton that hung overhead told her as much. Disregarding the utter creepiness that she felt entering his private room, she headed straight to the closet. She knew it was the closet because, cleverly, it was marked as such with big, bold letters: CLOSET.
Inside the closet, she found a large stack of freshly laundered blue button-down shirts. Right next to that pile was an arrangement of brown newsboy caps. Shaking her head at the sight, Stress just grabbed one each from the piles and closed the closet door. Then she began to head out of David's room.
Once she was downstairs again, Stress took the same way out that she had taken in. In order to make her way back to the front door, she had to pass the dinner table again. But, when she went past it, the golden case was gone. Instead, a glass bottle, filled with the same red liquid as the polite bottle from earlier, had taken it's place.
Stress placed the shirt and cap down on the table and picked the bottle up. "This one doesn't say 'drink me, please' like the other bottle did but, hell, am I thirsty. And, besides, I hate being so short. Maybe this will make me big again." When she finished talking herself into drinking the bottle – surprisingly, it didn't take herself very long to do that; people just don't learn or, at least, Stress doesn't – she lifted the glass to her lips and downed the entire bottle's contents. "Yuck," she said and tossed the bottle aside, "that stuff is nasty." She stuck her tongue out and, using her finger, tried to brush it. Nevertheless, the aftertaste of the liquid remained. "Well, at least nothing weird happened this time."
Just as those words were out of her mouth, she felt a familiar tingle in her tummy. "Guess I spoke too soon," she said as she watched her arms stretch out, then her legs and, lastly, her torso. She had grown ten times her size – again.
Considering she was inside a bunny's home when she grew, it was no wonder that she was now trapped. And, with her gigantic foot pressed against the door, no one could come inside the house either.
Outside of the house, still resting against the picket fence, David was beginning to get a bit nervous. "What is taking Sarah so long to get me my shirt and my hat?" he asked before opening the fence's gate and hopping towards the house. Once he reached the door, he tried to jiggle it open. However, since we know that Stress was presently stuck against the door, he could not open the door no matter how hard he tried. "What is going o—Aaahhh!" David, who had decided to peek inside the window of his home to find out just why the door wouldn't open, screamed when turned to the side. Stress' giant arm had just poked itself out of the window and was resting on top of the ground.
David took a few hops backward, away from the arm. "Snipeshooter!"
A short and stout boy of about twelve popped his head out from behind the back of the house. "What's the matter, boss?" he asked, his teeth clamped tight on the stub of a cigar, as he approached the agitated bunny.
David placed his hands on his hips. "Snipes, did you steal Racetrack's cigars again?" he questioned, forgetting about the giant arm for a moment.
"Nope. I found these stogies for a quarter somewhere," he answered, ashing the cigar next to one of David's boots.
David nodded before pointing towards the arm. "Alright then, Snipes. But , can you tell me what this exactly is?"
Snipeshooter followed David's point and eyed the curve of the arm. "Why, boss, that looks like an arm to me."
"Yeah, and who's ever seen an arm that big before?"
Snipeshooter shrugged his shoulders, still puffing on the end of his cigar. "No one, I'm sure, but that's still an arm there, boss."
David shook his head and hopped once for emphasis. "Well I can't have a giant arm sticking out of my window. Go get rid of it."
"Me, boss?" Snipes asked as he took one last drag off of his cigar and tossed it to the ground.
"Yes, you. You aren't afraid, are you, Snipeshooter?"
It was Snipeshooter's turn to shake his head. "I'm not afraid, boss, but I'll tell ya – I'm too tired to remove such an arm from a window. Big poker game with the fellas last night, you know how it is."
"Hey, guys. What's going on here?" asked a short dark boy as he walked past the white picket fence, conveniently carrying a ladder over his shoulder.
"Boots, thank goodness for you. Put that ladder up against the house over here," David instructed.
Boots shrugged and, while still carrying his ladder, opened the gate and approached the house. "Hey, Dave? Is that an arm?" he asked as he placed the ladder up against the white house. He had just noticed Stress' giant arm sticking out of the window.
Stress, who had heard everything that had happened while she was stuck in the house, thumped the ground outside, scaring the two boys and one bunny. "Get me out of here," she hollered.
While visibly shaken at the mini-earthquake that her fist had caused, none of the three of them paid her any mind. "Okay, Boots, what I need you to do is climb up that ladder, get inside the chimney and shimmie down to see who's in my house."
Boots thought about it for a second; his dark eyes went from the arm, to the ladder and back to the arm before he nodded. "Sure, Dave." He shrugged his shoulders and scurried up the ladder.
"I don't think so," yelled Stress as she positioned her right foot just inside the bottom part of the chimney. Once she felt Boots right above her tennis shoe, she kicked.
"Aaaahhh," Boots yelled as he went soaring into the air and landed just outside the picket fence.
Snipeshooter ran over to the picket fence while David hopped over just as quickly. "Boots are you alright?"
Boots sat on the ground, a dazed look on his face. "I don't know. I went down the chimney just like Dave asked but once I got down low something kicked me and up I went."
David shook his head and looked sorrowfully back at the giant arm. "Well, in that case, I guess there is only one thing we can do. We're going to have to burn down the house."
While Snipeshooter and Boots nodded their agreement, Stress, who had heard the next step in their plan, banged the ground again with her fist. "Oh, no you don't. You are not going to burn down this house while I'm stuck inside."
But, like before, the two boys and the one bunny ignored her shouts. David took a handful of flammable pebbles out of his pockets and gave a few each to Snipeshooter and Boots. Then the three of them walked forward to the window – well two of them did, David hopped – and tossed the pebbles in through the open window.
"Ouch. Stop that," Stress yelled as the pebbles hit her arm and, if the boys actually got a pebble to land inside the house, her belly. However, she stopped yelling when she noticed that, rather than start a fire, the pebbles turned into mini-cupcakes once they landed on the floor. She maneuvered the one hand that was still inside the house over to where a few cupcakes sat. Picking them up, she tossed them inside her mouth and swallowed. Finally. I've gotten rid of that bad aftertaste from that other bottle.
And that's when it happened again. All at once she began to shrink until she was only barely a few inches tall. When she noticed her shrunken state, Stress hurriedly ran to the back part of the house and exited through the back door. She didn't want to be around when they noticed that they had tried burned down the house for no reason.